


Free Verse and Japanese Aesthetics

by Goneahead



Category: Free Verse Poetry - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Meta Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 06:30:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2611820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goneahead/pseuds/Goneahead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a round up of random notes on poetry technique. I wanted them all in one place, so I could refer back to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Free Verse and Japanese Aesthetics

**Author's Note:**

> I am supposed to be writing fic for my wrimo, so instead I went and wrote meta. oops.

How do you edit Western free verse? Most books on poetry insist there are no rules, or worse, that free verse is based on some 'magical essence' the poet can just tap into. I think part of the answer lies in Japanese aesthetics, which contains concepts and rules that can strengthen free verse.

Here's a recent poem:

//Broken concrete,  
yellow caution tape. I  
am reminded  
again, of  
you, of

us--//

Here are some of elements I used in this poem:

 **Mono no aware:** Norinaga emphasized this as an essential part of haiku. Its a difficult term to translate, but it means either an awareness of the mystery of life, or the awareness of the ephemeral nature of life.

Here are three important ways this can be incorporated into Western verse:

sabi = a sense of loneliness  
shibui = the inherent beauty in things  
wabi = rustic, simple beauty

 **Metaphor:** Metaphor is tricky, because modern Japanese aesthetic says a good poem should be metaphor, but should not contain a metaphor. It's the difference between telling the reader what the metaphor is:

//Broken concrete,  
yellow caution tape. We  
are broken, too.The tape,  
fluttering in the wind,  
reminds me of  
us.//

and letting the reader figure it out themselves. In the second version, 'We are broken, too' violates this rule.

 **Kigo (a seasonal word) or kidai (a seasonal topic):** In haiku, words like 'frost' or 'summer' anchor the poem in the moment. In Western free verse, we can expand this to a word or phrase that anchors the poem in some other way. 'Broken concrete, yellow caution tape ' sets the poem firmly in the modern world.

When using kigo/kidai, the general rule of thumb is the words should not be repeated. A free verse poem can be strengthened by simply looking for these anchor words, and then paring them down to one word, or phrase. Here, the repeat of 'broken' and 'tape' weakens the second poem.

 **The twist/keriji:** In the Western tradition, a poem's twist is generally done through rhyme, meter, and metaphors. In Japan, it is much subtler. The Japanese tanka is an upper poem and a lower poem, which are connected only by tension or juxtaposition (there are three different juxtapositions in poetry: similar, contrast, comparison) In haiku it has become the keriji, a single 'cutting' word, on which the entire poem pivots. In this poem, the keriji is 'I'.

 **Ma:** Incorporating space into a poem. In haiku, it is generally the keriji, but it can be incorporated into free verse as another device to slow the reader down, or emphasize/heighten a line:

  
you, of   
(ma)  
us--(ma)  
  


What are other aesthetics that can be borrowed?

Here's a second poem:

//Two moths flutter  
inside the walls of the greenhouse,  
unaware summer has fled.

I am.

At night, my dreams   
are full of summer, but when I wake,   
the bed is still cold.//

Tsurayuki said poems compromise two things, kokoro (the heart or mind) and kotoba (the words). In other words, the human heart is the seed of the poem, and the words should be the leaves that grow from that seed. This is seen most clearly in the hokku form, where a person is moved by emotion to create a seasonal 'song'.

The upper poem follows traditonal hokku fairly closely:

two moths (noun/object)  
flutter (keriji or cut)  
inside the walls of the greenhouse (longer phrase)  
unaware summer (kigo) has fled. (mono no aware)

But the lower poem, after the pivot on 'I am', follows contemporary Japanese aesthetics. Shiki modernized hokku (seasonal poems) into haiku (shasei, or a sketch from life) in the 19th century. Akiko further westernized haiku by adding jikkan (the poet's emotions), which includes love and romance.

At night (short phrase) , (keriji) my dreams   
are full of summer, but when I wake, (long phrase)   
my bed is cold. (mono no aware)

One often over-looked aspect of English haiku is the use of punctuation, instead of a word, for keriji. This is a technique that works well in free verse as well. The extra punctuation in the lower poem also adds ma. Think of ma as the tobi-ishi, or stepping stones, in a Japanese garden. Ma is an invitation to the reader to pause for a moment, and reflect on the poem's meaning/beauty:

my dreams (ma)  
are full of summer, (ma) but when I wake, (ma)

I deliberately broke the kigo rule and repeated 'summer'. Because English does not have as many rhyming words and homonyms as other languages, we are forced to rely more heavily on meter, alliteration, and repetition to tie stanzas together. I actually edited this poem both ways, and decided it was stronger with the repetitive second 'summer'.

I want to go back and show another example of space and how it can strengthen a poem. This poem again relies on traditional Japanese structure, there is a keriji, and an upper poem juxtapositioned with a lower poem:

One thing follows another,  
the caterpillar, the cocoon, the moth.  
We met, we laughed, we loved.  
Why did I believe we would not part?

Now let's edit the last line to add ma:

One thing follows another,  
the caterpillar, the cocoon, the moth.  
We met, we laughed, we loved.  
Why did I believe, then, we would not part?

Simply adding that extra 'stepping stone' creates a much stronger poem.

Let's look at another poem:

//Distant thunder.  
I shut book and door,  
and go. Let my boots pull  
me down to the fields  
beyond, where waves of blue-   
green prairie grass tremble   
beneath rain-soaked skies.//

This poem relies on an interesting Japanese technique, sometimes called the zoom:

Distant thunder. (macro or wide view)  
I shut book and door, (micro or narrow focus)

You can zoom either in or out, though modern haiku tends to go from macro to micro. Also, most modern haiku poets heighten the zoom by focusing on a single noun, instead of using a plural noun--another useful trick when editing a poem. There is also sense-switching:

beneath rain-soaked skies

This is a technique where you mix the senses. Other, better examples are: 'loud reds' and 'a bright smell'.

I also used a pivot phrase (a device seen in older tanka), coupled with another Western poetic device:

Let my boots pull me down to the fields beyond

'me down/beyond' is an alliteration of vowels which ties the upper and lower poems together.

So, how do you edit a free-verse poem? I think a good path is to work backwards, through the waka (poem) traditions. First, Takuboku, who emphasized that a tanka is a poem that had both feet on the ground:

“My mind, which was yearning after some indescribable thing from morning to night, could find an outlet to some extent only by making poems. And I had absolutely nothing except that mind… I want to say this: a very complicated process was needed to turn actual feelings into poetry… Poetry must not be what is usually called poetry. It must be an exact report, an honest diary, of the changes in a man’s emotional life. Accordingly, it must be fragmentary; it must not have organization… Each second is one which never comes back in our life. I hold it dear. I don’t want to let it pass without doing anything for it. To express that moment, tanka, which is short and takes not much time to compose, is most convenient…”

A good free verse should be anchored in life. Shiki, who modernized the haiku, said that a poem anchored in the present should have three poetic principles:

shasei-sketches from life  
makoto-truthfulness  
using everyday language

If we take a step even further back, we find Norinaga, who was trying to formalize how to write poetry in the Japanese language, while retaining the essence of classical Chinese poetry. He broke haiku/hokku into four essentials. I have found that a good way to edit a free verse poem is to ensure that each of these essentials are present, while being mindful of shasei.

**Mono no aware:**

_Does the poem evoke an awareness of the world?_

Weak: I miss him.

Better: I still wait for the phone to ring.

_Does the poem have space (ma)?_

Weak: We walk together in the dark woods.

Better: Hand in hand, we walk. The woods are dark,

**koe (the tone/poet's voice):**

_Is the poem saying something in a fresh, or unexpected way?_

Weak: The rusty hinges protested

Better: The old iron screamed its refusal

**aya (pattern of words) and sama/sugata (poetic form):**

_Are all metaphors and anchor words (kigo) integral to the poem, and repeated sparingly?_

_Does the poem's words sound 'right' (scan) to the ear?_

_Are the words simple and deliberately chosen?_

_Is there smaller poems inside the poem?_

_Does the poem have pivots/kireji that feel natural and unforced?_

Here's another poem which has been edited to include these concepts:

//The solstice had  
broken down the   
season's gates. We  
flew across frost-  
hard fields, knowing   
spring was surely   
a wings-breadth  
away.

In winter's dying,   
we chased each other  
like swallows, gray-  
frocked children,  
racing the frost-  
edged wind.

Our laughter is  
still somewhere in  
my memories, bright  
frost crystals on dark-  
clouded windows,   
shut fast in the  
hope that someday-

Someday   
there will  
be a spring.//

Again, western devices are tempered with Japanese concepts.  Anchor words like frost and spring are repeated, but it is a deliberate word choice.  Ma and repetition are used together to emphasize the final lines.

Edit: Adding a fantastic quote by Hasegawa Kai:

“The reader of a haiku is indispensable to the working of ma. This person must notice the ma and sense the kokoro of the poet. A haiku is not completed by the poet. The poet creates half of the haiku, while the remaining half must wait for…the appearance of a superior reader. Haiku is literature created jointly by the poet and the reader.”

Kokoro is just as critical to free verse as it is to haiku. Hasegawa points out that "ma" is space, but it is also something intangible, psychological space and spiritual silence. So even though a modern haiku may focus on the shasei, or realism, the poem itself will not work unless it also evokes kokoro, which is the feeling, or spirit. In his own words, "From the time of the Man'yoshu, Japan's earliest poetry anthology, the Japanese literary arts have invested mono (things) with kokoro. Haiku are no exception. Even if they appear to be written only about things, there is definitely kokoro beneath the surface. However, because of the extremes of modern realism, kokoro is neglected, and only "things" have come to be written about in haiku." Ma, in its larger sense as a concept, creates kokoro.

Finally, here is a few modern poets that write haiku that illustrate all of these ideas beautifully:

**Yamaguchi Seishinatsu:**

_tookoo ya kyuu-Ro no machi wa ari to nomi_

A frozen harbor —  
what was once a Russian town  
there and nothing more.

_no kawa akaki tessa no hashi hitaru_

river in summer—  
a rusty iron chain, its end  
soaking in the water.

**Ann McKay:**

at first light  
casting their green nets  
the skeena fishermen

___

 

following father's deep snowsteps  
in single file  
to sabbath service

  
**Yosa Bosun:**

_Komabune no yorade sugiyuku kasumi kana_

the Korean ship  
not stopping passes back  
into the mist

_inazuma ya nami moteyueru akitsushima_

lightning --  
girdled by waves  
islands of Japan

**Matt Morden:**

end of the holiday  
a square of pale grass  
beneath the tent

**Don Baird**

nagasaki . . .  
in her belly, the sound  
of unopened mail

See also: [GLossary](http://www.stillinthestream.com/files/glossary.html)


End file.
